Something Quiet to Ease My Mind
by Scribbler
Summary: Pre series. A bullied boy. A Gameboy. A popular girl in a coma. A new friendship, almost broken, given another chance when fate steps in. Who, exactly, is saving whom here? Two souls find each other in the dark. Anzu and Yuugi friendship fic


**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Never were. Never will be.

**A/N: **I haven't been back to the early, pre-canon days of YGO is a long while, even though I still find them fascinating. The dynamics of Yuugi and Anzu's friendship before the events of the series take place is something that will always intrigue me. I've written about it before, so you might think I'd exhausted all avenues of interest. I thought so too. Do I know what possessed me to go back and come at it from a slightly (or wildly, depending on how you look at it) angle? No I do not, although I think Marian Keyes might have something to do with it.

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_**Something Quiet to Ease My Mind**_

© Scribbler, February 2008.

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_It's something sacred, something so beautiful,  
Something quiet to ease my mind  
When the pressure's taking me over - and over. _

'Cause I've been down and I've been crawling,  
Pushed around and always falling;  
You're up there, you're always with me  
Smiling down on me. 

-- From _Still Standing_ by The Rasmus.

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It's so quiet in here. I'm tempted to say 'too quiet', but that's not true. I love that it's so quiet. It's kind of weird, actually. I never thought I'd like it as much as this.

I think I used to hate silence. My memories are a bit patchy – have been ever since this started – but I remember that part. I once begged my parents for a walkman, even though tapes are going out of style. CDs jump too much when you move about, but cassette tapes just keep on playing wherever you are. I'd walk down to the park, or to the playground, or the store with boy bands singing about true love and ooh-baby-baby-ing in my ears. I don't have any memories of other music, so I guess I'm a big fan. Sometimes I pretended they were singing just to me, but I guess every little girl plays pretend like that. I would've worn the walkman to school too, but the teachers were really strict and I couldn't risk losing it. When I was at home I played music too, or went and hung out with Mom while she was watching her soaps because I didn't like being alone.

I'm all alone now. I'm all alone in the quiet and I'm totally okay with it. Go me.

I don't think I can go back, so being okay with the quiet is a good thing. Things would be difficult otherwise. The thing is, I wouldn't go back even if I could. I'm pretty sure there's nothing left for me up there, so why bother?

Not that my decision is stopping anyone. They just keep on bothering me, each determined to be the one who saves me. Someone told them hearing is the last sense to go. They've almost made a competition about it, showing up in my room day after day, night after night, talking and talking and trying to make me remember why I should come back. Apparently I have a lot of people in my life who want to be heroes. Except I'm way past the stage where I believe Chesney Hawkes is going to dance in and save me. I don't need saving, I just need them to leave me the heck alone so I can enjoy the quiet _in peace_.

I get a lot of visitors. I'm more aware of some than others. Now and then people show up who I don't remember. I spend a few minutes trying to work it out, but most of the time it's nobody important. That neighbour with the red Toyota Lexus. People from school. A couple of teachers. One charity lady who happened to be in the building visiting someone else. My parents. They tell me they love me, but if they really loved me they'd have stayed together. That's one big reason I don't want to go back.

Don't get me wrong; I didn't _choose_ to end up here. I didn't wake up one day and decide to be like this. I've seen those teenagers on TV, the ones who dress in black with too much eyeliner and talk about death and killing themselves. I'm not like that, I swear. My favourite colour is pink! I don't think they _really_ mean it, anyhow. If someone actually tried to kill them, tried to run them over or come at them with a knife like in those horror movies I'm not supposed to watch, I bet they'd be begging to stay alive.

Then again, maybe they do mean it. Maybe they'd draw bull's-eyes on their chests to make it easier for the insane killer. Maybe they jump into traffic for fun to see how many times the cars can avoid them before they get hit. I once saw a documentary about something like that. Teenagers are all sorts of weird.

Mikata wants to be a teenager already. She's so into boys and all that junk – she wears make-up to school even though we're not allowed. She came to visit me once, but I'm pretty sure that was just so she wouldn't look bad, since she kicked me out of the group right before this happened and probably doesn't care if I never come back. I was so upset – Mikata's my best friend, or so I thought. Now I guess she's not a very good friend at all, but at the time all I could think about was not having anyone to hang out with and how much I didn't want to be alone in the playground. Only the geekiest, most unpopular kids stay on their own at playtime. It makes you a target for the bullies, so it's best to be part of a group, and Mikata's group is the best one. Every girl in school wants to be _that_ popular.

I was really proud the day she let me in – there was a special ceremony behind the bike sheds and everything. I got a sparkly hairslide that marked me as a proper member of her group. Nobody else is allowed to wear sparkles in their hair. If their parents put stuff in they have to tear it out again before Mikata's girls spot them, otherwise they get into _so_ much trouble. Once time, when Kimi Nojimi's mom insisted she wear the sparkly hairslides her gramps got her for her birthday, Mikata stalked across the playground and torethem out so hard she took a big clump of hair with them. Kimi howled like a kicked racoon, but when the teacher asked why she knew better than to tell. _Nobody_ tells on Mikata. That'd be even more insane than breaking her rules. I'd envied the girls who wore those hairslides ever since the first day of school, so I was insanely proud and ran home to tell Mommy and Daddy all about it.

When Mikata came to see me she talked about how Takeru Yasuyoshi has a crush on her and bought her a box of Hello Panda cookies, but how she was more impressed by her older sister's boyfriend when he told her she looked nice in her new top. She talked about her nails, the new nail polish she'd taken from her mom's dresser, the party she's going to have for her eleventh birthday and some other stuff. I was bored, and yeah, I was angry over her being so two-faced, coming to see me right after she spoiled school for me, so I sank a bit deeper into the quiet. By the time I started paying attention again she must have gone, because it was just as quiet out there.

My Mom and Dad play my music, like it'll encourage me to come back. The only thing I need from them is a solemn promise they won't divorce, but they haven't guessed that yet. I don't dream in here, but I do get flashes of little movies and random pictures from a long time ago that should be too far back for me to remember – like the time we all went to the beach when I was four and I rode on Daddy's shoulders because I was tired, or when I was a baby and they sang the Gatchaman theme tune to send me to sleep. I don't want to come back if stuff like that doesn't happen anymore. I'd rather stay here. As long as I'm here they both have to be at my side and I don't have to live with one and only visit the other on weekends. Or see the other once in a blue moon like Kimi Nojimi. Her dad lives in Okayama and she only sees him three times a year. Or never ever see the other, like Umi Sogenji. She lives with her dad because her mom lives in Hungary with her new husband and children and Umi hasn't seen her since she was three. Umi and Kimi are so sad when they talk about their parents. I don't ever want to be that sad about my mom and dad.

"_Everything changes but you. We're a thousand miles apart and you know I love you. Oh, everything changes but you. You know every single day I'll be thinking about yoooooou_…"

That must be Daddy. He always liked that I listen to bands from America and Europe, and sometimes threw open my bedroom door to sing along with Take That or New Kids on the Block. I suppose that's because he always dreamed of living in America. He once showed me this book with pictures of famous American cities in it. There weren't many words, but the ones there were very long and I didn't know what even half of them meant. Still, I went as googly-eyed as him when he turned to a page of all these beautiful ballerinas who dance in a huge city called New York. I was so excited I asked if we could go and live over there so I could be one too.

I wonder whether he'll finally go and live in America now he's divorcing Mommy. Umi's mom did it, so it's not impossible. I don't want to think he'd leave me behind, but I can remember being so dazed after he announced he was leaving that I practically forgot my own name, so it's possible he already said so and I've forgotten. I was already dazed from Mikata tearing out my hairslide and shrieking how I'm not her friend anymore because I broke her stupid rules, and from Mr. Kondo yelling at me in Maths, and from that stray dog that jumped on me and shredded my backpack with all my assignments in it on the way home from school. Daddy's news was the icing on a very nasty cake – like fish paste and almond flavour with yam filling. I was so dazed I also forgot to look both ways when crossing the street. Daddy blames himself for me being here because of that.

Daddy asks me whether I can hear him. Sure I can – he sounds very far away, like he's in another room with the door shut, but I can still hear him. I feel bad about him crying until I also hear Mommy speaking, comforting him, and I decide it's not worth going back. They act more like a couple now than when they're at home arguing about bills, or about my school fees, or how Daddy goes out with his workmates too much and Mommy watches too many soaps. It's like life is frozen as long as I'm here in the quiet, and none of the bad things that were about to happen can happen unless I come back. It's better this way – for them _and_ me.

I'm not in Mikata's group anymore; I don't have any other friends because Mikata doesn't like it if girls in her group have friends outside it; my parents are going to split up and I'm flunking Maths so bad my teacher yelled enough to make me cry. He came to my hospital room and apologised, even though he also said it was stupid because I couldn't hear him, but it doesn't make any difference. If I wake up and go back to school he'll just yell some more. If I wake up Daddy will move out and Mommy will sob like when I found her in her bedroom with her wedding photos all over the floor. If I wake up I'll have to sit on the edge of the playground and hope the bullies don't pick on me like they do the other loser kids. None of the girls will want to hang out with me because Mikata will make their lives miserable if they do. You don't cross Mikata.

I don't want any of that to happen. Down here in the quiet everything seems calm and logical. I guess sometimes all you need is a little time out to see things clearly. I never understood when adults said that, but now I do. I don't want to die, but I don't want to go back either. I might just stay here forever in the in-between.

I slide below the surface, down, down, down. It's so peaceful here, like lying in a field or on the grass verge beside the canal, watching the clouds go by, with nothing to worry me, nothing to fear. Nothing, nothing, nothing…

With a fright, I'm jolted from my lovely nothingness. For a second I think there's someone in the room with me, but I can tell even Mommy and Daddy have gone home. Everything is still. I can't hear anyone breathing, and yet I know someone is here with me.

"Hello?"

The voice isn't coming from outside. It punches a horrid, jagged hole through the quiet that makes me want to cry because it's spoiled it. I feel like I did when a boy in kindergarten threw paint on my drawing after the teacher said mine was neat enough to go on the wall and his wasn't.

"Hello?" the voice says again.

I try to go deeper again. I don't want to answer. I just want to be left alone.

"Please don't do that. I'm a bit scared about where I am and you felt so peaceful and nice I thought maybe you could help me."

"I _was_ peaceful," I say, the same way you talk to people in dreams – the same way I've been answering Mommy and Daddy when they talk to me. Those on the outside can't hear me, but that doesn't mean I'm not saying important stuff. Stuff that's more important than news about dumb boyfriends and nail polish – blech! "Go away."

"Oh."

I can't explain what it's like to sense someone else the way I sense the owner of that voice. I can't see anything; the same way I can't see who's in the room with me. Mostly I work by smell and sound, but neither of those are doing anything right now. Instead it's … really, really weird. I feel a bid sad, but it's not my sort of sad. It's like when you watch a movie and the characters are sad and you sort of feel sad on their behalf, only more so in here because there's nothing else to concentrate on.

"Are you a real person?" I ask. Maybe I've gone into a normal kind of sleep and I'm dreaming.

"What?" the voice asks. It sounds young, maybe younger than me, and it's a boy even though it's all squeaky. "Sure I'm real. Aren't you? Are you … some sort of spirit? Am I dead?" He sounds panicky.

"No, not if you're talking to me. I'm not dead."

"What are you, then?"

"I'm-" I stop. I've never actually said the words before. I think about them before saying them, but either way they sound dumb. "I'm in a coma."

"Really? Does that mean I am too?"

"How should I know? Is there anyone in the room with you? Maybe they'll mention it the same way they did with me."

"I don't know. How am I supposed to know? All I can hear is you. Where are you? I can't see anything!"

I suddenly remember that special sharp-toothed alarm that makes my skin all prickly when I realise I've left my homework at home, or forgotten to bring my ballet slippers, or when I see Mikata scowling at me. I remember the rush of terror when Mikata caught up with me after class that day, the look on her face as she said she was throwing me out of the group. The voice is terrified and it's making _me_ feel just as awful.

"Stop it!" I say, scrunching up and trying to cover myself in the quiet. "Stop that! It's horrible. Stop panicking and just listen, see if you can hear with your ears. If you can remember where your ears are you're still alive, like me. Try and remember where you were before you got here. think back to the last thing you remember."

"I was … I was … I was at home doing my homework, and then I needed to throw up so I went to the bathroom, but ... but something was wrong. The room went all wobbly and I called my grandpa and then … I think I fell over and hit my head on the bath … then I don't remember anything."

"You threw up? Were you sick? Did you have a fever?"

"No, I throw up all the time. I was born with an upside down valve in my stomach, so sometimes I can't keep my food down. I'm supposed to have an operation soon to turn it right-side-up."

"So maybe they decided to give you your operation a little early if you were so sick you passed out."

"I can hear … I can hear someone talking. Hey, I can hear!" The panic eases off and I feel a little better. "I can hear my Grandpa. He's speaking to someone called Doctor Yamamoto. I guess that means I'm in hospital. My doctor's name is Doctor Yoshiro."

Briefly, I wonder if he could be at the same hospital as me. The name Yamamoto rings a bell. Maybe that's why this boy is here in my quiet. "What are they saying?"

"They're talking about me. Doctor Yamamoto says my head injury isn't very bad, and some other lady is talking about my stomach. Grandpa's asking how long it'll be before I come around from the anas … anuth …"

"Anaesthetic?"

"Yeah, that's the word."

"You've had an operation. See, I told you so. I'll bet they've fixed your stomach and you'll wake up, go home and never need to throw up again."

"So I'm not going to die?" He sounds a lot brighter. "And my tummy valve might be fixed too?"

A memory pops into my head of a donkey ride I once went on, ages ago, when the sun was warm on my face and I was laughing so hard I nearly fell off. Daddy was running alongside me and Mommy was laughing for us to stop so she could take a picture. I was so happy that day I felt like nothing bad could ever happen to me. I felt invincible. I haven't thought of that in years. The happiness in the boy's voice forces happy memories into my head like squeezing toothpaste from a tube.

"…so much better..." The boy's voice fades in and out like when my walkman chewed up my favourite East 17 tape.

"What?"

"I think I'm waking up. This darkness doesn't seem so dark anymore. I think I'm going back now."

"Bully for you." I sound sulky, even though happy memories are still bursting into my head like instant popcorn in a microwave. I bet he's overjoyed to go back to his life. I bet he doesn't have the kind of problems I do. Little kids don't understand how complicated life can be when you hit double figures. By the sounds of his voice, this kid doesn't sound very old.

"Aren't you going to wake up soon too?"

"No, I'm not under anaesthetic, I'm in a coma." Dummy. "Besides, I don't want to wake up anyway. I'm happier down here."

"Really? It's scary down here. It's so dark, and I was all alone until you talked to me. I kept feeling like the silence was trying to swallow me up and make me forget who I am. I was starting to forget things. Aren't you lonely?"

I push away the thought that big chunks of my memory have gone missing or started unravelling since I've been unconscious. "I listen to people who come to see me. They think they'll wake me up if they talk to me enough, but I don't want to go back."

"Why not?"

"My life sucks."

"…bet it …"

"What?"

"…bet it doesn't …"

"Yes it does."

The voice sounds further away, not quite in the next room but at least leaving this one. "So you'd rather stay here in the dark than go back see how you can make it better?"

"I can't make it better. All this horrible stuff keeps happening to me that I have no control over. My parents are divorcing and I don't have a best friend to talk to about it anymore because my old best friend hates me. She's going to turn the whole school against me and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Why … hate …?"

"Because I broke the group rules. Those rules are unbreakable. Rule number one is never break the group rules."

"Wha…?"

"Our group is supposed to be the best, and the best is only the best if they're keeping the worst in line, except I didn't do what I was supposed to. I rescued a kid from some bullies who were picking on him, even though it was their right because he's a bottom-feeder. I actually _punched_ one of them, right in the kisser. As if that wasn't bad enough I felt sorry for the loser kid so I sat with him and talked to him and played on his Gameboy for the whole of lunch. I couldn't help it, he looked so pathetic and his lip was bleeding, and I had some tissue in my pocket so I gave it to him, and he said thanks, and he was so nice and not afraid of me at all. and I … I kind of liked it. Everyone's frightened of Mikata's group. But then Mikata caught me and even though I broke his stupid Gameboy it didn't make any difference. Even worse, when she took my hairslide I yelled at her that her rules were stupid and so is she for ordering who can be friends and who can't. If I go back she'll make my life hell the way she already does for that kid. My mom won't let me move school because she's got enough stress in her life already, with my dad leaving, but everything will be awful so I don't want to go back. Nobody crosses Mikata."

If I were using my real voice I'd be breathless after that much talking. Instead, after I stop I'm all tingly, as though Mommy has crawled into the hospital bed with me again. She thought it would help, she said, though I think it was supposed to make her feel better as well as wake me up. She wasn't supposed to, and the doctor shouted at her that I have a head injury and shouldn't be jostled about, but after she moved I could feel my arm for a while even though I couldn't move it. It just felt like it had fallen asleep.

The other voice is gone. I can't sense it anymore. I guess while I was caught up in my own feelings and getting all ranty he slipped away and woke up. Well, I hope he's happy in his perfect little non-throwy-uppy life. Big deal. So he can eat like a normal person from now on. That doesn't solve any of _my_ problems.

I sink into the quiet again. I don't know how long for. Time is a bit funny here. Sometimes it feels like no time at all has passed, but Daddy's telling me about his Wednesday at work on five minutes after he was just telling me about his Tuesday at work. Sometimes it feels like I've been here forever. This time I feel strange. It's like nothing I've felt since I scrambled down the stairs and out the front door in my house slippers, head so full of Mommy and Daddy and pictures of their smiling, happy, wedding-day faces I didn't see our neighbour's red Lexus backing out of the drive.

I feel _bored. _I feel, finally, like the quiet is _too_ quiet. Like being alone is _lonely_.

I try to resettle myself. I can't go back. I can't wake up. And I'm not. I know that much – I'm still here, still in the quiet and making no move for the surface. Still, the quiet isn't as attractive as it was before that little boy's voice made a hole in it. It feels lumpy, like a quilt where all the feathers have shifted to one side and it's not the side you're laying under. I'm grumpy that he's spoiled the place where I'm planning to spend the rest of my life.

I shove myself under a flap of silence and close myself off from _everything_ – or try to. It's harder than it usually is.

Someone's talking on the outside. To me? No, I don't want to know. I don't care who it is or what they've got to stay. I'm going down, sinking lower, lower, lower…

No I'm not. I can hear the voice getting louder. It's not Mommy or Daddy, nor my music, or even someone from school. And yet … it seems familiar somehow …

"…so I'd really like it if you decided to wake up, because I wanted to thank you face to face for what you did for me. Uh, both times. You didn't have to be nice to me, and I didn't realise I was making so many problems for you. You always seemed so perfect, like you're life was, well, _perfect_. Walking around, flipping your hair, laughing and smiling and … I never realised … I can't do anything about your parents divorcing, but if you need a friend to talk to about it, I can do that part. I even know all the best places to hide around school…"

I'm rising. I force myself back down but some part of me is drawn to that voice.

I can't go back - _I can't_. If I go back all the bad stuff will happen and I'll be miserable.

_Aren't you miserable here in the dark? Doesn't listening to Mommy and Daddy cry make your heart ache? Divorce is painful, but they've been so unhappy together maybe they'll be happier apart. And maybe not being Mikata's friend is a good thing. She's not really a very nice person, after all. _

Thoughts I've been too frightened and stubborn to think drip into my head like water from a leaky faucet. They trickle between the cracks of my brain. I saw a picture of a brain in our school biology book, so I know there are enough gaps for this to be true. How do you close up the gaps in your brain to stop unwelcome thoughts from getting in?

_Do you want Mommy and Daddy to be miserable because of you?_

No, but … but … everything's falling apart. In one day I went from being one of Those Girls, the girls everyone wants to be, to having nothing - no friends, no family, and no self-respect. I'm awful at schoolwork, I'm social poison, and I was so terrible to that poor kid, breaking his precious Gameboy just because I thought it might make a horrid person like Mikata approve of me – like I needed her _forgiveness_ for being _nice_.

_Do you really need approval of a person like that? Do you really want to be friends with someone like that? _

But everyone else will hate me. It's not just Mikata – she controls the playground. _Everyone_ will make my life miserable if she says to, and I _yelled_ at her -

"… I'll even forgive you for breaking my Gameboy if you wake up…"

Something down here changes. The darkness is filling up with white light, a dry sort of humming light that turns into the soft press of blankets under my chin and red slits that I realise, belatedly, are my own eyelids. It's been a while since I saw them. Even longer since I used them.

The light stabs into my eyeballs like a needle. I wince, shutting my eyes again until I'm more ready to open them. When I finally do one of the first things I see is a skylight through which the night sky shows. There are stars. I never learned the constellations, even though it was a homework in first grade when we learned about astronomy. I blink, hear someone's breathing hitch, and turn my head to face them. My neck is stuff and sore. No wonder – I haven't used it in an age and there's a reason I'm in this hospital bed.

I recognise the kid from the playground. It's kind of difficult not to – his has the most bizarre hair I've ever seen and even though I _know_ he's the same age as me he looks and sounds much younger. The chair he sits in is like a giant's chair and there's a pole connected to his side with a funny little clear bag of liquid dangling off the top.

"OhmyGod," says the nurse next to him. The shock is plain on her face. "She's actually awake. Nobody's been able to … Even her own parents couldn't …all these weeks of trying and _you_ did it! You don't even know her. I didn't want to let you in, but you did it. I … oh my … I have to fetch the doctor!" She dashes to the door and yells something, but I'm too focussed on the kid with hair like a starfish addicted to dye. He has a bandage around his head and the edge of a cut peeps from underneath.

"Hello," I manage to croak, and then cough fit to burst. My lips are chapped and I remember an old saying Grandma used to use after smoking her favourite cigar out on the porch – my throat is drier than a desert man's butt crack. I always used to giggle when she said that. Just like the donkey ride, I haven't thought about it in years. "Was that you before?"

He smiles and lifts his pyjama top to show wads of gauze and cotton padding. He's had stomach surgery. I wonder how long ago, as well as how long I've been here. Doesn't stomach surgery mean you have to stay in bed for ages and not move around? Then again, for all I know his operation could have been just this afternoon. I get the feeling this kid is made for weird things – like talking stuck-up, delusional girls they hardly know out of their comas when even her hysterical parents can't.

I swallow. "I remember you. From school. I'm … sorry-"

He shakes his head. "Don't be. You woke up, and I said I'd forgive you if you woke up, since you helped me twice now. And don't worry about the Gameboy. My Grandpa got me another one as a reward for, um, not dying." For a second he looks uncomfortable but covers it by holding up a chunky grey Gameboy with a cartridge already inserted. "I brought it with me from my room, in case you wanted to learn how to play. I really like games, so if I was in a coma the idea of playing a new game would wake _me_ up. Uh, but if you don't, that's okay too. You probably hate this kind of thing. I … I just really like games, so I … uh …" He blushes when I don't say anything but keep staring at him. "I'm Yuugi. Yuugi Mutou."

"I'm Anzu."

I _am _Anzu. My name is Anzu Mazaki. I'm ten years old, and even if my life isn't going so great right now, I've decided I'd like to live it anyway. After all, when you hit bottom the only place to go is up, right?

"Did you-" I clear my throat. "Did you mean it when you said you'd like to be my friend?"

Yuugi smiles again, a big, cheerful, dorky smile that reminds me of nice stuff I forgot while thinking too much about bad stuff like dumb old Mikata Teki. And even though part of me is horrified at the thought of being friends with _him_, a loser who's memorised the best hiding places in school because he's such a bully-magnet; the totally opposite of Those Girls in every way … another part is thrilled that Mikata Teki's idea of friendship isn't the only one in the world.

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_**Fin.**_

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**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

_**Except I'm way past the stage where I believe Chesney Hawkes is going to dance in and save me.**_

-- Chesney Lee Hawkes (born 22 September 1971), is an English pop singer, songwriter, and occasional actor. He is best known for his chart-topping single The One and Only, which was released in March 1991. I have long since decided this song is the theme tune for my whole life.

_**That neighbour with the red Toyota Lexus.**_

-- This model was actually first launched in 1989. Fancy that. I did my research so I actually sound like I know what I'm talking about when dropping pop culture references.

_**When Mikata came to see me she talked about how Takeru Yasuyoshi has a crush on her and bought her a box of Hello Panda cookies.**_

-- Hello Panda is a popular brand of Japanese biscuits (cookies), manufactured by Meiji Seika. Each biscuit consists of a small hollow shortbread layer, filled with vanilla, strawberry, peanut butter or chocolate filling; chocolate is the most commonly available variety. Recently a yellow-boxed version containing the biscuits with a chocolate shell (instead of the usual shortbread) was released.

_**When I was a baby and they sang the Gatchaman theme tune to send me to sleep.**_

-- Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (科学忍者隊ガッチャマン, Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman, literally _Scientific Ninja Troop Gatchaman_), often shortened to _Gatchaman_, is a five-member superhero team which comprises the main characters in several anime originally produced in Japan by Tatsunoko Productions and later adapted into several English-language versions. It is also known by the abbreviated name _Gatchaman_ or the English-language name _G-Force_. The original series, produced in 1972, was eponymously named _Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman_ and is most well-known to the English-speaking world as the adaptation titled _Battle of the Planets_.

"_**Everything changes but you. We're a thousand miles apart and you know I love you. Oh, everything changes but you. You know every single day I'll be thinking about yoooooou…"**_

-- Lyrics courtesy of Take That's single _Everything Changes_. This was the fifth song taken from Take That's second album, also called _Everything Changes_, and was written by Gary Barlow and sung by Robbie Williams. It was released in April 1994 and was their fourth consecutive single to go straight in at #1, where it remained for two weeks.

_**Daddy's news was the icing on a very nasty cake – like fish paste and almond and yam flavour.**_

-- According to the 'YGO Bible' by Kazuki Takahashi, Anzu's absolute least favourite food is grated yam. Check out her vital stats here – www . seventh – star . net / wikific / Anzu (underscore) Mazaki

"_**No, I throw up all the time. I was born with an upside down valve in my stomach, so sometimes I can't keep my food down. I'm supposed to have an operation soon to turn it right-side-up."**_

-- Reference to my other fic, _Reality Only Knocks Twice_. I like using the fact that Yuugi had a childhood illness that made him a bit of a weakling, physically, and stunted his growth so that he looks like he's eleven years old when he's actually sixteen.

_**He's speaking to someone called Doctor Yamamoto.**_

-- Doctor Yamamoto is a head injury specialist who turns up again in my multi-chapter fic Schadenfreude. Incidentally, though it's not conformed he is Anzu's doctor in this fic, too.

_**The boy's voice fades in and out like when my walkman chewed up my favourite East 17 tape.**_

-- East 17 (later re-grouped as E-17) are an English pop boy band founded in 1992.

_**You always seemed so perfect, like you're life was, well, perfect. Walking around, flipping your hair, laughing and smiling and … I never realised …**_

-- Thoroughly influenced by Janeane Garofalo in _Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion_.

* * *


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